How a geek fooled the CIA into handing over £13m for a computer program to 'stop Al Qaeda attacks'

A computer expert was paid more than £13million after fooling the CIA that he had developed software to stop Al Qaeda attacks.

Officials were so convinced by Dennis Montgomery that, acting on a tip-off from him, former president George Bush ordered passenger jets flying from London to be turned back over the Atlantic amid fears they were being hijacked.

There was even talk of shooting down the jets because it was feared the ‘hijackers’ would crash them into U.S. targets in 2003.

Duped: Dennis Montgomery managed to convince President Bush that some passenger planes would be hijacked - and he ordered them to be turned around over the Atlantic

But the information, like other tip-offs supplied by Montgomery, 57, was false.

On that occasion French officials were so angry at the supposed lapse in their security - one of the planes was headed for France -
that they carried out their own investigation into Montgomery’s
technology and found it was a hoax.

One former CIA official said they realised then that they were conned and said: 'We got played'.

But even as late as 2008 he claimed to have picked up intelligence that
Somalia terrorists were planning to disrupt President Obama’s
inauguration in Washington DC.

The programmer was given contracts worth more than £13million after convincing the CIA and U.S. Air Force that his software could decipher coded messages being sent among terrorists.

Montgomery claimed his codes were able to find terrorist plots hidden in TV broadcasts made by the Arab network Al Jazeera.

He also said his software could identify terror leaders from photographs
taken by aerial drones and detect noise from enemy submarines - and he claimed that his software 'could save American lives'.

But an inquiry by The New York Times has revealed him as a fraud and, it is claimed, court documents that would prove the software failed are being kept secret by the U.S. Justice Department to prevent embarrassment to spy chiefs.